36. LYNDON

WE LEFT SYDNEY and Martha stayed behind with Robby, for which I was grateful. And I was right—the dynamic without her was entirely different. We were close to giddy, like schoolboys planning the biggest party in the world. I hadn’t realized how depressing getting old had been, that there had been nothing ground-breaking or new to look forward to, that there was nothing that hadn’t been tried. Everything was the same old same old, literally. But this—a world protest against capitalist greed—this was something different! We were going to take the bridge and make a statement, and the whole world would wake up and watch. We felt, in equal parts, as if we were going to war against the establishment as well as putting on the greatest protest show the world had seen in a very long time.

I couldn’t say I didn’t have my doubts. The anarchists in Newtown had seemed more focused on cinnamon buns than the strategies, and I voiced my concerns to Jason and Sean.

“They were the tip of the iceberg,” Jason said with confidence. “There were what, three hundred of them? We’re aiming for eight or nine thousand. There will be people coming from all over the world as well as the rest of Australia. The Newtown meeting,” he explained, “was a dry run of what I’ll post on the site. I wanted to see what kind of questions they’d raise so I could address them in the follow-up post. And the response was great—they asked ecologically sound questions and voiced valid concerns.”

“Aren’t you worried the website postings will be intercepted?” I asked. “Sean told me you are constantly under surveillance.”

Jason nodded. “I am. But I bounce the posts off different IP server addresses and change the script code every time I log in. I’ve done it for years. I mix my own code with the message interface. This decouples the software from its external interfaces and creates a smoother role by maintaining backward compatibility. It works brilliantly.”

I gave him a blank look and he shrugged impatiently. “We don’t have time for me to explain the logistics of it all. Just trust me, sunshine.”

“The protest’s going to be filmed by two guys with drones,” Sean cut in. “That’s where I was yesterday while Lyndon was experiencing the delights of young Polly. There’ll be a livestream on YouTube and Facebook, with Instagram stories and, wait for this,” he paused dramatically, “we’ll be live on national news and radio. A guy I went to school with is a vice president at ABC, and he guaranteed it.”

“Great work,” Jason said, and I felt annoyed. If he had asked me to do something important, I would have, but instead they all just left me and attended to their own heroics. I felt like a child who had been left to play in the sandbox while the adults talked. I leaned back in my seat and sulked.

“I got the call from our engineering genius and our banner is a good size. We’ll need a core team tending to that because it’s going to be as heavy as a small car. I’ll post for volunteers with a specific skillset. They’ll need to do a few practice runs in a field. The banner’s going to be bloody huge! That lot will need to be the first on the bridge.”

“They had a Breakfast on the Bridge in 2009,” Sean said, “and six thousand people pretty much filled the space, but they were sitting down in the middle of the lanes.”

“Good point,” Jason replied. “Not everybody’s going to be able to fit at the railing. The more climbers, the better. I’ll let people know and I’ll tell them to bring harnesses to attach to the bridge. Mark gave me some tips to post. The safer, the better. And you, Lyndon, have got one of the most important jobs of all.”

He turned around to face me in the back seat. I looked at him with some surprise. I’d given up having a role to play. So far, I had been as useless as a wet noodle while Sean and the engineering genius had been sparkling heroes. I had convinced myself there was hardly any point to my even being there.

“What do you mean?” I sounded truculent, like a kid who knew he was being duped into thinking he had a role when his real chore was sweep the stage before the show started.

“We need you to write a speech. The most kick-arse speech the world has ever heard. About capitalism, greed, anarchy, global warming—all of it. It needs to be like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, only don’t copy him—come up with something original. While our banner is the perfect and eloquent “Stop Shitting On Our World,” we want a more elegant and memorable manifesto. Something beautiful and historic.”

“Sure,” I said trying to sound casual, my heart pounding. “But you do remember that I’m an editor, not a copywriter?”

“I do. But you’ve had an intimate, up-the-arse experience of living that life. You have the knowledge of how big business is screwing us over, and you know what it’s like to no longer be welcome in that club—the club of the chosen brotherhood of big swinging dicks. I want your anger to shine through. I want to feel your pain and loss—how the system failed not only the world, but the individual. There’s no job security or sense of identity or community. We are rudderless, blown by the winds of greed, with capitalistic, corporate hands grabbing at the ship’s wheel and hanging on for dear life. Lifeboats are things of the past. People are just chucked overboard into the shark-infested waters without a hope in hell of maintaining their integrity. Good men are compromised because they’ll do whatever it takes to put food into the yawning squawking beaks of the starving chicks in their nest.”

“You should write it,” I objected. “What you just said is great.”

“Then write it down and work it into your speech,” Jason grinned. He handed me a pad of hotel stationery and a pen, and I scribbled furiously.

“It can’t be longer than five minutes,” Jason added. “Powerful and to the point. Use short sentences too … packs more of punch.

“I really don’t know why don’t write it yourself,” I muttered. “You wrote a whole book, remember? I’ve got no idea why you need me.”

“I just do, so please oblige me and stop arguing,” Jason said, and his voice brokered no room for objection.

I wondered if I could just paraphrase a few things from Jason’s book, like the title for instance. The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution. But most people associated the occult with ghosts and the paranormal, not with capitalism and global warming. I frowned and chewed on the pen, oblivious to the rest of the conversation in the front seat. Maybe I could pick up something from Shevek’s protest speech in The Dispossessed, but all the anarchists would know it, and I’d be shamed for the rest of my life. But the rest of the world wouldn’t, and wasn’t that more important?

“And you must carry on practicing your tattooing,” Jason said, breaking into my thoughts. “A tattoo a day, on me. I want you to be a real tattooist by the time I’m six feet under or dust carried away on a sea breeze. Do two a day even. I want you to work off a complex variety of stencils that I’ll pick. I’m serious about this.”

“That would be great.” I beamed from ear to ear as my bad mood evaporated.

I had thought that the tatooing would be pushed aside, given the magnitude of what was coming up, and I had been disappointed, but one hardly wanted to whine about something so trivial in the face of a world-changing event. And by this point, I really believed that our protest could change the world. We just had to pull it off perfectly.